First time shooting Basketball

This was my first time shooting basketball. My friend's son had a game and I thought I would go and give it a try. Any help would be great!!!

These were all shot with 40D 85mm f1.8 lens. They are a little dark as the lighting was bad and I got fooled again by the lcd and didn't look at the histogram! Because of them being dark I had to boost the exposure in lightroom so they are a little noisy! I know I have to work on my timing!

One question, I don't know if it's me and my Post processing work but I always have a lot of noise when I jump up to ISO 800 or higher. How do you guys keep your images so clean?

Settings were ISO 1600 F2.8 SS1/400 Auto WB AI Servo.

Bob,
I think you captured the shots great. These little guys crack me up, my son now plays college ball. I would open your 85mm to f/2.0....I usually go iso1600, f/2.0, shutter 1/320 or 1/400 depending on lighting, partial metering, center point focus, and custom white balance, ai servo....here is a few I took last weekend.

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mark2009 wrote in post #11706157
Bob,
I think you captured the shots great. These little guys crack me up, my son now plays college ball. I would open your 85mm to f/2.0....I usually go iso1600, f/2.0, shutter 1/320 or 1/400 depending on lighting, partial metering, center point focus, and custom white balance, ai servo....here is a few I took last weekend.

Thanks Mark!

I did have my camera set to center point focus but I had it on spot metering. I had it in manual mode but did one or two "test" shots to check. I just wish I would remember to check the histogram instead of the image! Ha Ha!!! I was thinking the same thing once I got home and saw how dark they were, I should have been at f2.0.

There is always next time.

Good shots you got there. From the stands?

Bob

Noise is most prevalent in the shadows and compounded when boosting exposure in post.

Activate "highlight warning" for the histogram. Crank up the ISO to achieve decent shutter speed, shoot hot - "to the right" - and don't be afraid of a few blinkies when viewing the histogram.

I haven't shot hoops in a while, but had good success at setting exposure by metering a white jersey (filling frame) and dialing in settings to achieve +1 to +2 EC. If you're shooting manual and the exposure needle in camera is dead center, then the whites will have a middle gray tone, like you have in your pics.

There are also programs out there to help clean-up noise. I use Noise Ninja, then there's Neat Image too.

Here's a shot with Canon MkII + 85 1.8 at f/2, 1/500 SS, ISO 3200.

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Ronnie...nice shot!!!

My shots were from this little track they had going around the gym, was kind of neat, never took them from there,,,,a lot of shadows though, so I only had a few decent ones....

On the 85mm,,,,keep it a f/2.0, and get your shutter to 1/400....I use a white piece of paper of my computer to take my white balance shot, work pretty good.

Thanks guys!

Ronnie they are a little gray now that you mention it! I will see if I can fix it.

Bob

Bob, the 40D starts to get pretty noisy by ISO 1600. At 3200 it's just horrible. I try to never shoot anything at ISO 3200 with my 40D. It's just not worth it in the end. I guess if its the difference between getting the shot or not... Well I'm not a pro (most of the time), so I'd just rather not shoot that camera at ISO 3200.

But there are some nice PP noise reduction programs available that help. I personally use Neat Image with my PSE 8 and it works really well.

Here's a couple shot with the 40D at ISO 3200 using my 85mm f1.8, not my favorites, but they show the nasty grain and what might be possible with noise edit programs. The originals were worse. Much worse. The 40D just isn't great at high ISOs.

Chas, I do have Neat Image but never liked the results I was getting with my old Pentax equipment. I could never get it set up to my liking. How do you have your Neat Image set up?

With my Pentax gear I downloaded the color test page. Printed it and took pictures of it with different settings and that did help a little but still didn't like it. Did you do this or did you find a preset to download?

I will have to do some research on this tomorrow.

Thanks
Bob

Bob, I just mess with it untill I like what I'm seeing. I try to set up pre-sets for the ISO used, but I always tweak each image. The two I posted above were probably the absolute worst of the worst that were worth saving. The 40D is a great camera, it just doesn't do High ISO very well. I'm saving for a 7D to replace it.

Thanks Chas!

Bob